According to the official 007 edition Omega Seamaster Swiss watch™, there is no time for No Time To Die.
What there hasn’t been time for lately has been my coverage of all the various bits and pieces to have come out of EON over the last month. The theme song, promotional posters and a new ad have been released and I will eventually cover them all when I get the gumption, but for now I must focus on the latest and biggest bombshell to drop from this production in recent memory.
No not one of Craig’s patented, expletive laced F-bomb interviews.
I’m speaking of the bombshell concerning EON’s decision to push back the release of No Time To Die by 007 months!
Thus there was suddenly “time to die.”
While the tweet above doesn’t specifically state the worldwide concern over the Coronavirus as the reason for the delay, the mention of the “global theatrical marketplace” suggests that it is. Then you have this strange bit of circumstance, a scant two days earlier, sycophantic super fan site MI6-HQ posted an “open letter” to the Bond producers penned by the “MI6 Staff.” In this missive the “staff” plead for EON to delay the release of Daniel Craig’s latest outing as Britain’s most famous super spy because of the virus. Considering the timing, one has to wonder if this wasn’t written by EON themselves to soften the blow and make this look like a fan sanctioned decision. They start their plea with a thin appeal to “public health”:
“With the Coronavirus reaching pandemic status, it is time to put public health above marketing release schedules and the cost of canceling publicity events.”
Then quickly transition to the real reason for their concern, the box office:
“Of the countries with large public gatherings banned or restricted, their combined ‘SPECTRE’ box-office was $313m, or 38% of the global haul.”
To the first point, I find it humorous how they paint the postponement of this one film as an act of heroism, as if the masses were going to flock to this film come hell or high water or in this case global pandemic, risking viral exposure to see Craig’s highly unanticipated swan song.
OMG girl! I’m totes gonna risk the plague to see this craggy face in a joyless melodrama!
Also for me to believe these two fans are such concerned citizens as to organically author a letter entreating EON’s delay of the film to somehow save humanity is laughable, then for EON to actually do it two days later seems just a bit too much to swallow.
Actual footage of too much to swallow.
To the box office argument, I have to wonder why a couple of fans are so adamantly concerned with EON making absolute top dollar? But passing that to stay on point, I say why not simply postpone the film in the affected markets? As pointed out by the Hollywood Reporter, the studios have already blown half of what they expected to receive from China on promotion thus far! After the millions of dollars expended on ads that aired during the Super Bowl, Academy Awards and Basketball All-Star Game among others, coupled with the fact they will need to start all over from scratch when the new date approaches, surely only delaying in the Asia market is the more frugal option.
EON’s marketing strategy?
If a global postponement rather than a localized one is due to fear of the film leaking online, I’ve got news for the studios, that’s going to happen anyway and now possibly even before the film premiers!
Yo, ho, ho, mate!
Considering the fact no other films are taking the route of Bond in “preserving the public safety” one has to wonder if there is something else at play? Perhaps the production needs a bit more time to polish this turd? At least that’s the rumor according to this site and when you consider they had another late term setback when composer Dan Romer was kicked to the curb in favor of Hans Zimmer only a few months ago that doesn’t seem too far fetched. You’ll remember it was almost one year ago when EON held their pointless press conference to tell us absolutely nothing about this film, here’s my take on it at the time. The reason they had nothing to report was the fact none of it had been written yet, since previous director Danny Boyle and his scribe of choice John Hodge had bailed on the project. Thus leaving the production to start over from scratch at the eleventh hour. That was the reason the release date had been pushed back from November 2019 to April 2020 in the first place. EON should have just pushed it back a whole year to November 2020 originally, thereby giving them enough of a timetable to craft a film people would actually want to go see! Instead they crafted a slip shot, written as they filmed mess, plagued by delays and rushed to the editing bay. Production was so bad, media outlets openly wondered if it was cursed, if your set is that chaotic the finished project can not be of supreme quality.
The original production title of this film.
Another possibility for postponement is the plot. According to early rumors the evil scheme of Rami Malek’s “Safin” involves gene warfare, somehow weaponizing the DNA of a lady, possibly Madeline Swann. A rumored working title for this script was Genome of a Lady, a play on the Fleming short story Property of a Lady. Such a plot would not go over too well with a global pandemic dominating the nightly news. To my mind, unfortunate events of a similar nature to plot points of a film occurring near the release date have been the only reason for postponement in recent memory.
Not what you want your plot to focus on at the moment.
Then there’s the tone deaf promotion of this film’s production since it started, painting this film in the minds of many as the “wokest Bond ever” with talk of female 007, #metoo, and even tampons! All this leading to No Time To Die’s public image being a hot mess of social justice. Almost every article in the public square and certainly every video (not produced by sycophants) on YouTube covering the madness have a mass of comments below, declaring in no uncertain terms how they will not be seeing this film in theaters and not because of any virus. Perhaps the studios hope another half year may put enough distance between this poor publicity and the film’s opening day to salvage a bit of public credibility and coax a few more dollars out of pockets.
The current hype surrounding this film.
Whatever the reason, EON have scored themselves another half year to put this dumpster fire out, or spray gasoline upon it, I suppose we’ll find out which by year’s end.
So it appears there is time to die after all.
Speaking of time on your hands, you’ll need it if you intend on viewing this film whenever it does finally come out. Clocking in at 2 hours 43 minutes it’s just as long as the bloated, unwieldy SPECTRE and as we know from that film, that’s a long time to sit through kitschy melodrama, maudlin storytelling and visibly bored actors phoning in their over paid performances, all the while uttering a variety of polemics against the “patriarchy” and other such cause celebre. Considering all the chaos, it will be interesting to see if/how that run time gets adjusted between now and November.
I also wondered if the delayed release date will allow the director more time to polish the movie in post-production. But I’m guessing that the extra time would have been much better spent up front in the crafting of the script. “Kitschy melodrama” and “maudlin storytelling” are what I’m expecting too.
Yes, the time would have been better spent on the front end crafting the film producing a story and non-cringe worthy dialog.
There is a rumor that this delay was actually precipitated by a dreadful test screening, however I didn’t want to address that too much because the source didn’t provide any details such as where this screening took place or more importantly what the audience took offence to. At any rate I’m sure no matter how many re-shoots or how much celluloid hits the cutting room floor this chaotic mess can’t be truly salvaged.
A 2 hour 43 minute runtime is ridiculous. It shows a complete lack of discipline by the filmmakers.
No Time To Die, the film for those who saw SPECTRE and thought this needs another 3 minutes. You’re absolutely right Rog, rumor has it the pre-title sequence alone will be 20 minutes, this is a sure sign of masturbatory film making at it’s worst, just as it was in SPECTRE.
I feel that the talk of re-shoots may not be far off the mark.This film has had problems from the start and once I read that DC was having a large creative producing influence over it ( i.e Waller-whatshername) I knew it was in big trouble.
I have no issue with DC as an actor but he has made no secret that he despises Bond,the character and the films and, by extension, the fans.
This makes the cringe making sycophancy of some the sites even more bizarre as it seems whatever Babs and DC throw at them they will lap it up.As a Bond fan for decades I find this very strange when I read comments,on the lines of, that “before Craig every Bond was rubbish” or “I never watched a Bond film before DC” or simply ” Craig is the best”. Dear me.whats going on?
The so called open letter to EON was,in my opinion,quite obviously staged and this leads me to the conclusion that the test screening may not have been as wonderful as EON would have liked and the film company has stepped in with some damage limitation suggestions
.Craig wont give an **** ( in his own charming language) as he will no doubt be happy to bring it down and Babs is so besotted with him she has lost all sense of objectivity years ago.
However you cant polish a turd, is a crude phrase but the only one I can think of that sums this mess up up.
and p.s its good to find a site that speaks for the true Bond fans.
keep up the good work – I love the posts.
First, thank you for the kind words, I know how you feel as far as finding this site, I felt the same when EON ironically pointed me in it’s direction in 2012, when it was featured in their own self congratulatory documentary Everything Or Nothing. I also recommend this web site
http://n007.thegoldeneye.com/index.html
written by a friend of mine, Ian Dunross who takes a much more cerebral as well as humorous approach to our man Craig, I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.
As to the rest of your post I couldn’t say it better myself, absolutely right in every respect!